During a White House briefing on Friday, President Biden claimed twice that 350 million Americans had been vaccinated — tens of millions more than the entire population of the United States.
“So we have to get more people vaccinated. I said, well over — what’s the number again, I have to remind myself — 350 million Americans have already been vaccinated. They’re doing fine,” Biden said.
He later repeated the claim, “We have roughly 350 million people vaccinated in the United States, and billions around the world.”
It is likely that Biden intended to say that 350 million vaccines have been administered. According to the CDC, “As of August 5, 348.9 million vaccine doses have been administered.”
Biden’s claim that more Americans had been vaccinated than exist comes after the Biden administration failed to reach its July 4th vaccination goals.
According to a White House fact sheet, Biden’s goal was for “70% of the U.S. adult population to have one vaccine shot and 160 million U.S. adults to be fully vaccinated by July 4 so that life can start to look closer to normal.”
Neither of these numbers were hit until nearly a month later. On Monday, the CDC said that 156,500,924 adults in the U.S. were fully vaccinated and 70% had received at least one dose.
On Thursday, the CDC announced, “Overall, about 193.2 million people, or 58.2% of the total U.S. population, have received at least one dose of vaccine. About 165.6 million people, or 49.9% of the total U.S. population, have been fully vaccinated. As of August 5, the 7-day average number of administered vaccine doses reported ... to CDC per day was 699,261, a 13.63% increase from the previous week.”
